TREASURES GALLERY · Torch of the xVi Olympiad Melbourne 1956 diecast aluminium alloy and silver piCtures ColleCtion reCent aCquisition 1956 Olympic torch This is one of 110 torches

TREASURES GALLERYLARGE PRINT LABELSPlease return after use

OCTOBER 2012

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TERRA AUSTRALIS TO AUSTRALIA

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RobeRt bRettell bate, MatheMatical, optical & PhilOsOPhiCal insTRumEnTs, WhOlEsalE, RETail & fOR ExPORTaTiOn, Londonsurveying instruments used by sir Thomas mitchell during his three expeditions 1831–1846

brass, bronze, iron, glass and cedar

Maps ColleCtion DonateD by the DesCenDants of sir thoMas MitChell

sir Thomas mitchell’s sextantThomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792–1855) was appointed Surveyor-General for New South Wales in 1828. At the time, the Survey Department’s inadequate equipment and failure to coordinate small surveys were delaying the expansion of settlement. Mitchell argued for importing better equipment and conducting a general survey of the colony. He also oversaw the creation of the first road network. Mitchell’s explorations led to the discovery of rich pastoral land, dubbed ‘Australia Felix’ (Latin for ‘Happy Australia’), in central and west Victoria.

eMi austRalia, Sydney, and eMi GRoup, LondonTorch of the xVi Olympiad Melbourne 1956

diecast aluminium alloy and silver

piCtures ColleCtion reCent aCquisition

1956 Olympic torchThis is one of 110 torches used in the torch relay, which began in Cairns, Queensland, on 9 November. Athlete Ron Clarke lit the cauldron to open the Games of the XVI Olympiad in Melbourne on 22 November 1956. Shared between 3118 torchbearers, a cylindrical fuel canister of naphthalene and hexamine was clipped to the base of the bowl and each torch was reused up to 25 times. Two mobile workshops accompanied the relay to keep the torches burning.

bluesky (design consultant) G.a. & l. haRRinGton (manufacturer) for sydney oRGanisinG coMMittee foR the olyMpic GaMes and univeRsity of adelaide school of Mechanical enGineeRinG, in partnership with fuel and coMbustion technoloGy pty ltd (engineer)sydney Olympic torch 2000

aluminium, steel and plastic coating

piCtures ColleCtion

2000 Olympic torchThe torch relay leading up to Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron to open the Sydney Olympics passed within one hour’s drive of 85 per cent of Australia’s population. Eleven-thousand torchbearers participated in the 27,000-kilometre journey from Uluru. An Australian design, the torch could burn in rain, hail, strong wind and even underwater, fuelled by a propane/butane mixture. A pilot flame within the combustor reignited the torch if it was extinguished during the relay.

W. butcheR and sons, London (est. 1902)harold Cazneaux’s midg box quarter-plate c.1904

wood, metal and glass

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by DiCk sMith on behalf of rainbow Johnson, 1994

Cazneaux’s first cameraCazneaux (1878–1953), described as the father of modern Australian photography, pursued a distinct style and ‘truly Australian sunshine effects’. Cazneaux possibly purchased this camera with prize money won for his first outdoor photograph Fishing off the rocks (1904). With it, on his way to and from work each day, he captured beautiful impressions of Sydney life. Cazneaux was co-founder of the Sydney Camera Circle and photographer for Sydney Ure Smith’s magazines The Home and Art in Australia.

WilliaM buRWash and RichaRd sibley London (registered 1805)salver presented to sir James stirling on 31 December 1838

sterling silver

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD to the CoMMonwealth GovernMent in 1938 by reGinalD purbriCk, MeMber of parliaMent for liverpool walton, uniteD kinGDoM

stirling’s sterling silver salverStirling (1791–1865) was the first Governor of Western Australia. Personally welcoming early settlers to the colony and attentive to their concerns, he secured respect and loyalty. In 1838, after nearly a decade, Stirling resigned to resume his naval career. Colonists presented him with this imported English salver, a suitable gift for a governor who insisted upon the ‘social virtues’, including formal attire, even when dining in a canvas tent in the hot summer while the colony faced starvation.

nelson illinGWoRth (1862–1926)Cast of henry lawson’s hand 1922

bronze

sir williaM DarGie ColleCtion (piCtures)

henry lawson’s handAfter Lawson (1867–1922) died, Sydney sculptor Illingworth made this cast of the bush poet’s right hand. Lawson battled alcoholism and poor mental health during his later years, but his poetry and stories had already made him a household name. He was the first Australian writer to be honoured with a state funeral.

Bullseye lantern owned by bushranger ‘Captain moonlite’ c.1860

iron, glass and textile wick

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by Mrs J. eDMonDson, 1951

Captain moonlite’s lanternBushranger Andrew Scott (1842–1880), self-styled ‘Captain Moonlite’, used this lantern during his last hold-up. In November 1879, Scott was arrested, two gang members died and a policeman was mortally wounded during a violent robbery of Wantabadgery sheep station near Wagga Wagga, NSW. Local John Hurst found the lantern hidden by Scott in a hollow log before the hold-up. Hurst’s daughter Elizabeth Edmondson donated the lantern at the suggestion of the poet Mary Gilmore. Scott was hanged on 20 January 1880.

Mere pounamu 18th or early 19th century

nephrite jade

rex nan kivell ColleCtion (piCtures)

Kotiate paraoa 18th or early 19th century

whalebone


maori weaponsThe mere pounamu is the most prized of Maori weapons. Pounamu, or nephrite jade, was scarce and vigorously traded by Maori from earliest times. The hard, beautiful stone was crafted with great skill into a variety of carving tools, weapons and jewellery. The kotiate, or double-notched style of Maori fighting club, is made of hard, durable whalebone. It was probably crafted using stone tools, before European contact made steel carving tools available to Maori.

1812 life mask of ludwig van Beethoven, aged 41

plaster

piCtures ColleCtion bequest of eve hunGerforD, 1977

Beethoven’s life maskViennese sculptor Franz Klein (c.1779–1837) took Beethoven’s mask in 1812. Beethoven, anxious about suffocating in the wet plaster of Paris, flung the original cast to the floor. Many artists used the reassembled and much-copied mask to model the composer’s intense expression. This copy was the model for Parisian painter Michel Katzaroff’s 36 scenes in the life of Beethoven. In 1952, Katzaroff gave the mask to his friend Eve Hungerford, a Sydney violinist, composer and teacher.

lOnKEE, swatow (shantou), China

Chinese Tea Caddy Globe between 1860 and 1880

pewter

Maps ColleCtion

Rattlesnake-shaped brooch that Owen stanley’s sister-in-law, Eliza n. stanley, gave to the wife of Dr John Thomson, surgeon on hms Rattlesnake, in remembrance ‘of the old ship’ c.1850

gold, enamel and gemstones

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by Mary bennett, 1966

mrs macquarie’s earrings 1820–1840

gold, citrine

piCtures ColleCtion DonateD by Mr eDwarD Manley hopkins, DesCenDant of eliZabeth MaCquarie’s nieCe, 1968

eRik lindbeRG (1873–1966)beRtRaM Mackennal (1863–1931) Olympic gold medal for swimming won by fanny Durack at stockholm 1912

gold

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by frank DuraCk, 1956

GaRRaRd & co. ltd, London (est. 1735) Officer of the Order of the British Empire, imperial honours decoration given to Bessie Rischbieth, Western australian suffragette 1935

gold

bessie risChbieth ColleCtion (piCtures)

WilliaM faRMeR & co. inc. (est. 1897)Key presented to the Prime minister W.m. hughes upon the opening of the Commonwealth Bank, sydney 22 August 1916

gold

papers of williaM Morris huGhes (1862–1952) ManusCripts ColleCtion

tiffany & co., New YorkDavid livingstone Centenary medal awarded to antarctic adventurer Thomas Griffith Taylor by the american Geographical society 1923

gold

papers of thoMas Griffith taylor ManusCripts ColleCtion

paul neWell (designer) tRofe austRalia pty ltd (manufacturer) fatso the fat-arsed Wombat, as seen on The Dream with Roy and H.G. during the Olympics, sydney 2000

gold

piCtures ColleCtion

Attributed to Julius hoGaRth and conRad eRichsen (designers)

australian design brooch c.1850s

goldpiCtures ColleCtion presenteD by laDy katherine Darwin

doRa ohlfsen (1867–1948)Commemorative medal sold to raise money for permanently disabled australian and new Zealand soldiers 1916 (design), 1919 (struck)

bronze

piCtures ColleCtion

Rebecca eMes and edWaRd baRnaRd London (est. 1808)silver kettle and spirit lamp given by Queen Charlotte to sir Joseph Banks 1813

silver


a queen’s kettleBanks (1743–1820), the trained naturalist who sailed with James Cook on the Endeavour, was a close friend of King George III, Queen Charlotte and their children. This kettle was a gift from Queen Charlotte while Banks was ill in 1813. The Queen was a keen amateur botanist. From 1773 she helped Banks establish Kew Gardens, London, as a centre for research into the thousands of exotic species of plants brought back from the Great South Land.

TERRA AUSTRALIS TO AUSTRALIA

MacRobius aMbRosius theodosius (active c. AD 400)Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (In Somnium Scipionis) and Festival of Saturn (Saturnaliorum)

Venice: Ioan Gryphius, c. 1560

Maps ColleCtion

a zonal world mapThis is one of the oldest European world maps. Though printed in the sixteenth century, the map’s origins are in the manuscript work of the Roman philosopher Macrobius, who lived centuries earlier. In map terminology, it is called a zonal map, dividing the world into zones or climates. To the south is a large frozen land. The map illustrates Macrobius’s commentary on the Dream of Scipio, by the Roman lawyer and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC). Cicero’s main character, Scipio Africanus, tells of a dream in which his grandfather transports him to the heavens from which they can see how small the world is and how pointless the pursuit of celebrity.

GlobesKnown in antiquity, globes became fashionable in Europe in the late 1400s. They were produced by the most important names in mapping, including the Flemish mapmaker Gerard Mercator (1512–1594) and the Dutch Blaeu family.

In addition to being useful reference tools, globes were valued as elegant furnishings and curiosities. In the 1600s, accuracy became increasingly important to globe-makers and their customers. As explorers charted distant lands, globe-makers incorporated new information into their globes.

Throughout early modern Europe, globe-making was a specialist craft passed from master to apprentice. The maker’s style is usually distinctive. This globe was made by one of the greatest English firms, J. & W. Cary, which had the highest reputation for accuracy, design and production values. With a surface formed from gores (tapered paper segments), it has a brass meridian ring and a horizontal band engraved with a calendar scale and signs of the zodiac. The National Library of Australia holds one of the world’s most significant collections of Cary globes.

J. & W. CaRY (active 1791–1825)

Cary’s new and improved Celestial Globe

London: Made & sold by J. & W. Cary, No. 181 Strand, 1 March 1799

hand-coloured printed paper on papier mâché with plaster coating, mahogany and brass

MAPS COLLECTION RECENT ACquISITION

The heavensThis, along with its terrestrial partner, is the largest Cary globe. It was also one of the last pictorial globes produced, the constellations boldly illustrated with mythical figures. It includes the latest and most detailed telescopic discoveries of the time, with over 3,500 stars and many new observations taken in the southern hemisphere. The cartography includes the work of William Herschel (1738–1822), discoverer of Uranus, and references his published discovery of nebulae and star clusters.

Attributed to Jacob GeRRitsz cuyp (1594–c.1651)Portrait of abel Tasman, his wife and daughter c.1637

oil on canvas


a successful explorer and his familyAbel Tasman (c.1603–1659), who is thought to be a subject of this painting, was the premier Dutch mariner of the 17th century. He mapped Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and northern Australia for the Dutch United East India Company between 1642 and 1644. The Dutch were a major world power in the 1600s with a flourishing middle class. An astrolabe and globe refer to Tasman’s seafaring, while an apple passed between mother and daughter symbolises the mother’s nurturing role.

from antwerp to amsterdam

Two centres of trade dominated European map-making between 1500 and 1700: the Flemish city of Antwerp in the sixteenth century and the Dutch city of Amsterdam in the seventeenth. These decorative maps, by some of those cities’ greatest map-makers, show how commercial maps changed to reflect new knowledge gained through voyages of discovery, particularly Dutch encounters with Australia throughout the seventeenth century.

During the sixteenth century Antwerp was the major trading city in Europe, and became a centre of printing, for map-making in particular. The famed Gerard Mercator and Abraham Ortelius both worked there. Political and religious persecution from the late 1560s, however, greatly affected Antwerp’s wealth and many Protestant merchants left the city. Amsterdam took over as Europe’s cartographic powerhouse from the late sixteenth century, before the establishment of the United East India Company or VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). Founded in 1602 and disbanded in 1799, the VOC was a semi-government company that dominated trade and sea routes to the spice-rich East Indies. Amsterdam was the VOC’s mapping headquarters.

abRahaM oRtelius (cartographer, 1527–1598) and fRans hoGenbeRG (engraver, 1539/40–1590)new map of africa (Africae Tabula Nova) from The Theatre of the World (Theatrum Orbis Terrarum)

Antwerp: Gielis Coppens van Diest, 1570

hand-coloured engraving

rex nan kivell ColleCtion (Maps)

The great OrteliusAbraham Ortelius was a leading figure in Antwerp map publishing. His landmark multi-volume work of 1570, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, is considered to be the first modern atlas. His new map of Africa was the standard map until well into the seventeenth century. It represented a leap forward in sophistication and accuracy. This beautiful map closely followed the mapping of a contemporary Italian cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, though Ortelius has pared back Gastaldi’s decorative program, leaving only three sea monsters and three ships. Ortelius’s coastline reflects new discoveries in West Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. The atlas was reprinted many times—the same copper plate was used to print this map between 1570 and 1612.

Michael MeRcatoR (1567–1600) america or new india (America sive India nova)Duisberg: 1595


rex nan kivell ColleCtion (Maps)

a mercator map of americaGerard Mercator (1512–1594) died before his dream of publishing a multi-volume atlas was fully realised. His son Rumoldus completed the project with the help of other relatives. This map of the Americas appeared in the atlas and is the only known map by Gerard’s grandson Michael Mercator. The outline is based on Rumoldus’ 1587 world map. It reflects the current search for rivers across North America and depicts a north-west passage through the Arctic Circle. It also shows a large southern land called ‘Terra Australis Nondum Cognita’ (Southern land not yet fully known). An annotation records that some call it Magellanica ‘after its discoverer’, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.

ClauDius PTOlEmY (author, 80–150)Willibald piRckheiMeR (translator, 1470–1530)Michael seRvetus (editor, 1511–1553) The Geography

Lyon: Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel, 1535

engraving

Maps ColleCtion

The oldest surviving mapping treatiseOriginally written in Greek after AD 146, Ptolemy’s Geography is a synthesis of ancient knowledge that explains how to draw maps of the earth as projections, using coordinates. Lost to the West for a millennium, the text re-emerged in Europe in about 1300. Cartographers revisited and reinterpreted it, incorporating new knowledge gained through voyages of discovery. This volume was edited by the Spanish theologian Michael Servetus, who advocated a re-examination of Biblical geography. He was later burnt at the stake for heresy.

fRanCisCO PElsaERT (c. 1591–1630) The unlucky Voyage of the ship Batavia (Ongeluckige voyagie, van’t schip Batavia)

Amsterdam: Jan Jansz, 1647

engraving

petheriCk ColleCtion (australian rare books)

a terrible and bloody mutinyIn October 1628, the VOC flagship Batavia, under Pelsaert’s command and laden with goods, treasure and 316 passengers, soldiers and crew, set sail from Holland for Batavia (Jakarta). On 4 June 1629, just before dawn, the ship ran aground on a coral reef in the Houtman Abrolhos, off the coast of Western Australia. Forty people drowned, the survivors seeking refuge on low-lying coral islands. Pelsaert and 46 others set sail for Batavia in the ship’s boat to seek help. In their absence, the ship’s undermerchant, Jeronimus Cornelisz, seized the cargo and began a reign of torture, rape and massacre. When Pelsaert returned with the rescue ships three months later, there were only 80 people remaining. The mutineers were immediately tried; the ringleaders sentenced to death and hanged.

huGo allaRd (c. 1628–1691)new map of the East indies (Nova tabula India Orientalis)

Amsterdam: Hugo Allard, c. 1665


tooley ColleCtion (Maps)

nova hollandiaThis edition of Hugo Allard’s map of the East Indies is one of the earliest printed to show the results of VOC captain Abel Tasman’s voyages to Australia in the 1640s. The VOC closely guarded knowledge of its discoveries and limited access to its archives. By the 1650s, however, Dutch commercial mapmakers, such as Allard and Hendrick Doncker, were incorporating Tasman’s charting into their maps. Here, Australia is marked ‘Nova Hollandia’ (New Holland), and the name came to be used for more than a century. Allard was a competitor of Amsterdam’s more prominent Blaeu, Hondius and Jansson map-making families.

huGo allaRd (cartographer, c. 1628–1691) and RoMeyn de hooGhe (attributed artist, 1645–1708)The newest Chart of the Whole World (Novissima totius tarrarum orbis tabula)

Amsterdam: c. 1685

engraving

Maps ColleCtion

The apotheosis of Dutch commercial mappingDating from two decades after Allard’s map of the East Indies, this double-hemisphere world map is arguably one of the most splendid decorative maps of the Dutch Golden Age. Commercial cartographers of this period frequently employed noted artists to make their maps as appealing as possible. De Hooghe lived and worked in Amsterdam, moving to Haarlem in around 1681. Of supreme versatility, he was a skilled etcher, draughtsman, painter and sculptor. Here, the Roman gods Apollo (steering his chariot) and Neptune (with trident in hand) take centrestage.

WoRkshop of isaac de GRaaf (1668–1743) from the Cape of Good hope to the sunda straits

Amsterdam: c. 1735

ink and pigment on parchment

kerry stokes ColleCtion, perth

The indian Ocean according to the VOCThis base, or prototype, map was made in the workshop of the renowned Isaac de Graaf, official VOC cartographer between 1705 and 1743. Each VOC ship was equipped with a number of navigational charts to enable its captain to negotiate the vast distances and perilous waters they faced. This overview chart of the Indian Ocean was used on voyages to the East Indies and was supplemented by other more detailed charts. It is printed with navigation or rhumb lines for plotting courses. VOC captains were required to record their route, and information gathered, on their maps and return them at the end of voyages. Marks were then erased and the map could be reissued. This chart maps the Cape of Good Hope, the island of Sumatra and the western coast of Australia.

saMuel Wallis (1728–1795)Otaheite [Tahiti] or King George’s island c. 1767

pen and wash


John GoRe (c. 1729–1790)Entries for 25 June–7 July 1767 in log of the Voyage of hms Dolphin to the south seas volume 2 1767

ink

ManusCripts ColleCtion

The Dolphin in Tahiti‘[A]n attempt should forthwith be made to discover and obtain a complete knowledge of the Land or Islands supposed to be situated in the Southern Hemisphere.’

With these words, the British Admiralty charged Wallis (1728–1795), captain of HMS Dolphin, with searching for the great south land. The 1766–1768 voyage failed to find such a landmass, but succeeded in reaching Tahiti in June 1767, and 14 other islands. The importance of the Dolphin for subsequent British expeditions has sometimes been overlooked. James Cook, for example, had access to the Dolphin’s records, and seven of its men (and even the same goat) sailed on both this and Cook’s Endeavour voyage (1768–1771). Gore, master’s mate on the Dolphin and 3rd lieutenant on the Endeavour, was described by a contemporary as ‘a tower of strength in the ship’s company, imperturbable and absolutely reliable’. His log gives a firsthand account of the Dolphin’s time in Tahiti. Wallis’ drawing of Matavai Bay may date from 26 June 1767, the day on which he took possession of the island, naming it after King George III. Another of Wallis’ drawings of this view is held in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

GeoRGe caRteR (1737–1795)Death of Captain Cook 1781

oil on canvas


Cook’s sensational deathJames Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay, Hawai’i, on 14 February 1779. He had impatiently gone ashore to retrieve a stolen ship’s boat. On Cook’s first visit the local people had venerated him as an incarnation of the god Lono. Now they turned on him. Carter’s grandiose history painting portrays Cook as a heroic figure and takes viewers into the thick of what one eyewitness described as ‘a most miserable scene of confusion’.

The Endeavour voyageJames Cook’s handwritten journal documents his experiences on the voyage of HMB Endeavour (1768–1771), the first of Cook’s three epic voyages of exploration. Purchased in 1923 for £5000, the journal’s status as ‘Manuscript Number 1’ identifies it as a foundation treasure of the Library’s collection.

Cook wrote 753 pages. He began with factual entries describing the state of the weather but later expanded his observations to events and people. In places, he borrowed from the Endeavour journal of self-funded passenger Joseph Banks (1743–1820).

The voyage was organised by the Royal Society of London to observe the transit of Venus in Tahiti. Cook received ‘Hints’ from the President of the Royal Society counselling patience and forbearance in the treatment of indigenous peoples. By contrast, the British Admiralty’s ‘secret instructions’ directed Cook to search for a ‘Continent or Land of great extent’ and to ‘take possession’ of suitable locations for Great Britain.

Bureau c.1760

Indian rosewood, ebony and ivory

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by the DireCtors of anGus anD robertson, 1970

Cook’s deskThis fall-front bureau, shown to Queen Victoria at the Royal Naval Exhibition, London, on 2 May 1891, was described as ‘formerly belonging to Captain James Cook RN, the celebrated navigator’. Constructed simply, with side handles for portability and fixing to a table or floor, it was probably used by Cook for administrative tasks, including writing letters, the ship’s log and his journal. The desk features a backgammon board and a hidden drawer to house secret documents.

manuscript Copies of James Cook’s Correspondence with the admiralty Victualling Office, Relating to the first Voyage of hmB

Endeavour 27 May 1768

ink


a meticulous manJames Cook was a meticulous and organised man, who had his clerk, Richard Orton, keep copies of his correspondence with the Admiralty and branches of the Navy Board. This letter book also contains a copy of Cook’s ‘secret instructions’ from the British Admiralty to find the great southern continent. On display are letters regarding the provisioning of HMB Endeavour for the first voyage to the South Pacific.

insCribeD on the unesCo MeMory of the worlD reGister, 2001

Memory ofthe World

United NationsEducational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization

JaMes cook (1728–1779)Endeavour Journal 1768–1771

ink


Cook on the reef: ‘the ship struck and stuck fast’

Here Cook records the drama of his experiences after running aground on the Barrier Reef late at night on 11 June. In what was a life-threatening situation, after having thrown ‘over board 40 to 50 Tun weight’ of guns, ballast and provisions, while continuously pumping water that was leaking into the Endeavour’s hold, the ship was freed. Cook’s entry conveys the drama: ‘This was an alarming and I may say terrible, circumstance and threatend immediate destruction to us as soon as the ship was afloat’. Deciding to fother the ship—to cover the large hole in the hull with a sail—the crew bravely fought to save the Endeavour, alternately devastated and then made jubilant by their changing circumstances. Cook writes, ‘In justice to the Ships Company I must say no men ever behaved better than they have on this occasion’…

JaMes douGlas, 14th eaRl of MoRton (1702–1768)hints Offered to the Consideration of Captain Cooke, mr Banks, Dr solander and the Other Gentlemen Who Go upon the Expedition on Board the Endeavour 10 August 1768

ink

papers of sir Joseph banks (ManusCripts)

a hunger for vegetablesCook’s Endeavour voyage was a fact-finding mission with several objectives. In these ‘hints’, Lord Morton, the president of the Royal Society of London, urges the senior officers of the voyage to collect living botanical samples, and provides instructions on how to do this properly. Morton was keen to ensure that the interests of the historic fellowship of scientists at the Royal Society were clearly defined, and well understood, by those on the expedition. Two months after writing these hints, Morton died without hearing the outcome of Cook’s historic first voyage.

RichaRd GoodMan (active 1807–1822)The Resolution Table c.1810

various timbers and ivory

perManent loan froM the DaviD roChe founDation

‘This ship shall live to rolls of endless fame’A masterpiece of English cabinet-making, this unique Regency period library table in the Greek Revival style was made to commemorate James Cook, Britain’s greatest mariner, and to celebrate the might of the Empire. The parquetry tabletop features an English-oak urn from HMS Resolution with inscribed ivory panels. The urn is surrounded by timbers from many of the countries visited by the Resolution, including Australia, on Cook’s second (1772–1775) and third (1776–1779) voyages.

John keyes sheRWin (engraver, 1751–1790)after nathaniel dance (artist, 1735–1811)Captain James Cook

London: J.K Sherwin, 1784

engraving


‘The only one i have seen that bears any resemblance’While there are many portraits of Cook, none are as familiar as this commanding likeness that shows him in his captain’s full-dress uniform holding his chart of the Southern Ocean. This is the second edition of Sherwin’s 1779 engraving based on an oil portrait by Dance, commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks and executed prior to Cook’s third fateful voyage. The surgeon’s mate on that voyage reported the portrait to be ’the only one I have seen that bears any resemblance to him’. Cook’s wife Elizabeth distributed copies of the engraving to friends after his untimely death in Hawai‘i in 1779.

The faces of Cook

Cook was a mariner, cartographer, scientist and explorer in an age of great discovery. His maritime achievements changed seafaring practice and brought British imperialism to the southern hemisphere. All likenesses of the navigator stem from three major contemporary oil portraits by Nathaniel Dance (1735–1811), William Hodges (1744–1797) and John Webber (1752–1793), as well as early engravings by artists including John Keyes Sherwin (1751 – 1790). The scale of Cook’s contribution to world knowledge resulted in a proliferation of memorabilia, such as that displayed here, some of which continues to be reissued today. Plaques and medals played a key role in disseminating Cook’s image and his possessions are found in private and public collections around the world.

Bookplate after 1785

engraving


‘he left nothing unattempted’After Cook’s death in 1779, his achievements were memorialised and celebrated. On 5 September 1785, King George III granted a coat of arms to Elizabeth, widow of Britain’s foremost navigator. The only design known to include a globe, it also includes two polar stars, tracks of some of Cook’s Pacific voyages and the motto ‘he left nothing unattempted’. One of Cook’s sons later arranged the design of this family bookplate based on his father’s coat of arms.

WalkinG cane c. 1770

bamboo and wax


thoMas R. poole (1765–1837)Captain James Cook 1795–1815

wax and oak

piCtures ColleCtion reCent aCquisition

a royal giftThis extremely rare, perhaps unique, example of Cook memorabilia is modelled on the famous oil portrait by Nathaniel Dance (1735–1811). Inscriptions on the reverse by the artist, who describes himself as ‘modeller to the Prince of Wales’, suggest it was a gift from the artist to Princess Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821), who was the Princess of Wales between 1795 and 1820. Wax modelling in relief portraits was popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Library purchased this portrait at auction in 2011 and it is the only known example by Poole in a public collection.

fork c.1770

ebony and metalpiCtures ColleCtion presenteD by the honourable J. huMe Cook

Box made from the wood of hmB Endeavour c.1879

wood, textile and metal

piCtures ColleCtion

WedGWood and bentleyJosiah WedGWood and sonsPortrait medallion of Captain Cook [after hodges] c. 1777 Plaque of Captain James Cook [after Webber] 1957

Staffordshire, England white and blue jasper

piCtures ColleCtion

Cook memorial medal ‘Courage and Perseverance’, struck soon after news of Cook’s death reached England 1780bronze

leWis pinGo (1743–1830)medal issued by the Royal society, london, to commemorate Cook, ‘the most intrepid explorer of the oceans’ 1784bronze

piCtures ColleCtion

leWis pinGo (1743–1830)medal issued by the Royal society, london, showing fortune with the inscription ‘Our own have left nothing untried’ 1784silver

W.G.200th anniversary medal issued by Commemorative international ltd for The Commercial Bank of australia, ltd 1970gold

piCtures ColleCtion

John haMilton MoRtiMeR (1740–1779)Captain James Cook, sir Joseph Banks, lord sandwich, Dr Daniel solander and Dr John hawkesworth after 1771

oil on canvas

piCtures ColleCtion bequest of DaMe Merlyn Myer, 1982

Earliest known portrait of CookIn October 1771, the young English novelist Fanny Burney wrote of her father’s recent visit to Hinchingbrooke, the estate of James Cook’s patron Lord Sandwich, to meet Mr Banks, Captain Cooke and Dr Solander, who have just made

the Voyage round the World, & are going speedily to make another.

Probably commissioned by Lord Sandwich to celebrate the voyages, this painting depicts, from left to right, the naturalist Daniel Solander, Banks, Cook, the author John Hawkesworth and Sandwich.

WilliaM hodGes (1744–1797)Woman and child of Tanna 1774

red chalk

piCtures ColleCtion

Portraits from the PacificHodges was the first classically trained artist to sail with Cook. An award-winning artist and well respected for his chalk drawings, Hodges chose to use red chalk to execute many portraits of the south sea islanders he encountered on the expedition. Although his subjects are often generically identified, their individual characteristics and expressions are depicted sensitively and reveal ethnographic details about the inhabitants of the South Pacific. The Library holds 18 of the red chalk portraits that Hodges executed on the second voyage.

WilliaM hodGes (1744–1797)man of Tanna 1774

red chalk and pencil

piCtures ColleCtion

‘the natives came to us seemingly in a more friendly manner’Hodges was the official artist on Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific (1772–1775). After relations with the native inhabitants of Eromanga had deteriorated into violence in August 1774, Cook approached the neighbouring island of Tanna, Vanuatu, with apprehension. He was acutely aware that his first encounters with islanders would undergo scrutiny in England and Cook recorded the delicate diplomacy of arriving at Tanna in his journal. Cook became friends with a local man, Paowang, and it has been suggested that this is his portrait.

John WebbeR (engraver, 1739–1820) Portrait of Poedooa [Poedua], daughter of Orea, King of ulaitea, society islands c. 1782-85oil on canvas


a Polynesian VenusWebber, a Swiss painter, was the official artist on Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific (1776–1779). HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery departed Plymouth in search of the North West Passage and to return Omai, a native of the Society Islands to his home. Webber first encountered 19 year old Poedooa when Cook detained her and other members of her family on the Discovery in exchange for the King’s assistance in capturing two deserters from the ship. There are three known versions of this painting, the others are held by the UK National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington.

australia’s earliest existing printed documentThis humble sheet is a playbill advertising an evening’s entertainment at Sydney’s first theatre. It was rediscovered unexpectedly in 2007 in an obscure collection in Canada’s national library.

Eight years after the First Fleet’s arrival, the new colony was flourishing. According to David Collins, the governor’s secretary: ‘Some of the more decent class of prisoners, male and female’ banded together to open the theatre in January 1796. The exact location of the theatre is unknown. Collins writes they ‘had fitted up the house with more theatrical propriety than could have been expected, and their performance was far above contempt’. The actors’ motto was: ‘We cannot command success; but we will endeavour to deserve it’.

One actor was probably the printer George Hughes. Although the First Fleet carried a printing press, it was not used until September 1795. Considering the ephemeral nature of the document, the playbill’s survival is amazing.

Playbill for a performance of Jane Shore, The Wapping Landlady and The Miraculous Cure at the Theatre, sydney, saturday 30 July 1796

Sydney: George Hughes, Govt. Printer for Theatre, Sydney, 1796

typeset ink on handmade paper

australian rare books ColleCtion Gift froM the GovernMent of CanaDa to the people of australia, 2007

australia’s earliest existing printed documentThis playbill advertises three performances of tragedy, dance and farce. First is Jane Shore, a popular political tragedy by the English playwright Nicholas Rowe, first performed in London in 1714. Jane Shore (d.1526/7 ) mistress to King Edward IV, was known for her wit, beauty and suffering. Next is a humorous hornpipe dance, The Wapping Landlady, followed by a farce, The Miraculous Cure. Tickets ranged in price, catering for both poor and wealthy patrons.

insCribeD on the australian reGister, 2011 unesCo MeMory of the worlD

Memory ofthe World



aleXandeR huey (active 1809–1818)Portrait of Rear-admiral William Bligh 1814

watercolour on ivory

piCtures ColleCtion faCsiMile: oriGinal reMoveD for preservation

Bligh in retirementIn 1814, Bligh was Rear-Admiral of the White, living in retirement in Kent. This is one of the last portraits of Bligh to survive. Huey exhibited this fine portrait at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1814. After serving with the 73rd Regiment in NSW in 1810, Huey pursued a career as an artist. In Australia, Huey became good friends with the artist John Lewin.

WilliaM bliGh (1754–1817)The Bligh notebook 28 April to 14 June 1789

ink


Cast adrift This notebook documents the extraordinary journey undertaken by William Bligh and his loyal crew after the mutiny on the Bounty. Cast adrift near Tonga in the South Pacific, Bligh navigated the ship’s launch over nearly 6000 kilometres of open ocean, eventually making landfall on the island of Timor. Only one crew member died on the voyage—he was killed by islanders when the boat landed on Tofoa seeking fresh water.

WilliaM bliGh (1754–1817) list and description of hms Bounty mutineers 1789

ink


list of mutineersThis concise list, compiled at sea by Bligh after the Bounty mutiny, documents the name, complexion, hair, build and distinguishing marks of each of the mutinous sailors. Bligh’s notes reveal that many of the sailors were heavily tattooed and marked by the scars earned throughout a hard life at sea. Here, Henry Hilbrant is described as ‘strong made; his left arm shorter than the other, having been broke; is an Hanoverian born, and speaks bad English; tatowed in several places’.

Of the 25 mutineers, 14, including Hilbrant, were captured two years later by the HMS Pandora. On the way back to England the ship was wrecked 120 kilometres from Cape York. Hilbrant, along with three other prisoners and 31 of the ship’s company, drowned.

GeoRGe Johnston (1764–1823)Proclamation issued by major George Johnston on the day after the deposition of Governor William Bligh 27 January 1808

rex nan kivell ColleCtion (australian ColleCtion)

another mutiny!Johnston commanded the New South Wales Corps, which controlled the early colony’s thriving rum trade. Misreading the powerful interests at stake, namely those of pastoralist John Macarthur, Bligh unwisely attempted to restrict the liquor trade. With this document, Johnston righteously proclaims the ‘cessation of martial law’. The previous day, Johnston had placed Bligh under house arrest proclaiming himself ‘Lieutenant Governor’. In 1810 Bligh returned to England, where Johnston was court-martialled and stripped of his military office.

aRthuR boWes sMyth (1750–1790)Entry dated 19 January 1788 in Journal 1787–1789

ink


first fleet JournalIn 1787 the First Fleet, carrying over 700 convicts and their children, began the eight-month voyage to Botany Bay. Over the next 80 years, British courts sentenced more than 160,000 convicts to transportation, often for petty crimes. The First Fleet journal of ship’s surgeon Smyth puts a human face on the statistics. Smyth writes about the harsh conditions aboard the Lady Penrhyn, which carried half of the female convicts. Despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead, in this entry from 19 January 1788, Smyth describes the feeling of finally reaching their destination:

The joy w’ possesed every breast upon so long wish’d for an Event may better be conceiv’d than expressed, more particularly as it was the destination of the Voyage, so far as respected those who were going to settle at Botany Bay, & it is 10 weeks on Monday since we left the Cape of Good Hope; the longest period of any we had been at Sea w’out touching at any Port.

Convict uprising at Castle hill [also known as Battle of Vinegar hill] 1804

watercolour


Battle of Vinegar hillIn 1804, over 200 Irish convicts stationed at Castle Hill plotted a rebellion in which they planned to lay siege to Parramatta and Sydney. This illustration by an unknown artist depicts the culmination of the two-day rebellion near present-day Rouse Hill on 5 March, when 15 rebels were killed in a skirmish with the New South Wales Corps. The rebel leader Phillip Cunningham shouts ‘Death or liberty, Major’ to which Major George Johnston, commander of the corps replies, ‘You scoundrel, I’ll liberate you!’ The incident was named ‘the Battle of Vinegar Hill’ after a famous battle in Wexford, Ireland, during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Subsequently nine rebels were executed and many more were flogged, placed in chains or sent to Coal River, later Newcastle. Fifty years later, the rebel miners in Ballarat used ‘Vinegar Hill’ as the password for the Eureka Stockade.

poRt Jackson painteR (active 1788–1790s)aboriginal hunting implements and Weapons c. 1790

watercolour


Early paintings of indigenous life Works by the so-called Port Jackson Painter are considered the earliest and most meticulous attempts by a European to represent Sydney’s Indigenous peoples and culture. Over 250 works are attributed to the artist, who was possibly Governor Arthur Phillip’s building superintendent Henry Brewer (c. 1743–1796) or, less likely, the convict artist Francis Fowkes (active 1788–1800). The Library has seven works by the Port Jackson Painter that were collected by Rex Nan Kivell and which were previously attributed to Governor John Hunter. This one depicts several spears, a yilimung, a ngalangala (club), a mugu or mo-go (stone hatchet) and a boomerang.

first fleet watercoloursIn the earliest years of the colony, British officers and other ‘First Fleeters’ produced works of art portraying the local people, flora and fauna. The close relationship between many, often unsigned, works suggests that the artists worked with or copied from each other. This is the case with John Hunter’s sometimes naive sketchbook and some of the 56 exquisite watercolours, known as the Ducie Collection, attributed to midshipman George Raper. The similarities between many of the Hunter and Raper watercolours raise questions about how the artists worked and their techniques. Hunter, the captain of the First Fleet’s supply vessel HMS Sirius, is believed to have copied from Raper, the Sirius’ midshipman. Hunter’s sketchbook includes 100 watercolours of Australian natural history and Indigenous subjects. Raper is a shadowy figure who died young and is best known for his maps and landscapes.

Attributed to GeoRGe RapeR (1769–1796)sacred Kingfisher (Todiramphus sanctus) 1789

watercolour

piCtures ColleCtion purChaseD froM the DuCie-Moreton faMily, 2005

John hunteR (1737–1821)sacred Kingfisher (Todiramphus sanctus) in Birds & flowers of new south Wales Drawn on the spot in 1788, ‘89 & ‘90 1788–1790

watercolour


sacred kingfishersAttributed to Raper, the Ducie Collection of 56 watercolours was discovered in 2004 in the United Kingdom during a routine art valuation. Hidden from view for over 200 years, the colour of the works is astonishingly vibrant. These kingfishers are one of 28 pairs of images in the Ducie Collection and Hunter’s sketchbook. Raper’s watercolours were probably copied by Hunter, the less accomplished of the two artists. Although the two sacred kingfisher works have a similar composition, the details are different enough to suggest that Hunter was painting another bird.

conRad MaRtens (1801–1878)View of fort street and the north shore, from flagstaff hill 1843

oil on canvas


Views of sydney harbourMartens painted some of the most indelible and famous images of Sydney Harbour in the 19th century. He developed his style, a blend of Romantic sensibility and an ability to accurately render topographical detail, after replacing Augustus Earle as the official artist on the HMS Beagle. It was on this voyage Martens developed a lifelong friendship with the naturalist Charles Darwin. Martens came to Sydney in 1835 and quickly became the artist of choice for the town’s colonial elite. This painting shows Flagstaff Hill in the left foreground, now known as Observatory Hill.

auGustus eaRle (1793–1838)Waterfall in australia c. 1830

oil on canvas


Views in new south WalesEarle was a remarkably talented travelling artist who spent time in Australia between 1825 and 1828. He painted landscapes, genre paintings and portraits, many of which include sensitive portrayals of the Indigenous peoples he met on his travels. Over 160 of his works, mainly watercolours, are part of the Library’s Rex Nan Kivell Collection, including this image of Wentworth Falls, in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. The painting features an artist, possibly Earle himself, sketching an Indigenous man who appears far more comfortable in his surroundings than the group of Europeans clinging awkwardly to the sandstone rocks.

WilliaM Westall (1781–1850) Views on the East Coast of australia c. 1802

watercolour

piCtures ColleCtion

from the academy to australiaWestall was a 19-year-old student at London’s Royal Academy when he was selected by Joseph Banks in 1801 to be the landscape and figure painter on Matthew Flinders’ Investigator expedition to New Holland. Painting coastal profiles to aid future navigators was one of Westall’s duties, and Flinders selected the views ‘most fitting to be delineated’. Possibly sketched from the top of the mast, the profiles detail the coastal structure and were used to accompany Flinders’ charts. Here we see a view of Port Jackson, where the crew spent ten weeks on shore while the Investigator underwent repairs after charting the south coast of Australia.

MattheW flindeRs (1774–1814)General chart of Terra australis or australia showing the parts explored between 1798 and 1803 by m. flinders, Commander of hms Investigator

London: G. & W. Nicol, Pall Mall, 1814

copperplate engraving

tooley Maps ColleCtion

Terra australis or australiaBy circumnavigating the continent between 1801 and 1803 in the Investigator, Flinders showed that the west and east coasts were of the same land. He recommended that it be called ‘Terra Australis or Australia’. The shaded lines show the coastlines Flinders surveyed, filling in gaps on existing maps. Owing to their accuracy, Flinders’ charts were used by the British Admiralty for a century and settlement sites were chosen solely on Flinders’ descriptions.

edWaRd close (1790–1866)sketchbook of scenes of sydney, Broken Bay, newcastle and Region, new south Wales 1817–1840

pencil, ink and watercolour

piCtures ColleCtion

an engineer’s view of colonial newcastleOnce attributed to Canberra pioneer Sophia Campbell (1777–1833), in 2009 this unsigned volume of fine watercolour paintings and pencil sketches was re-attributed to her brother-in-law Close, an English soldier and engineer. A veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Close arrived in New South Wales in August 1817 with his regiment and was stationed in Sydney and Newcastle before deciding to settle in the colony in 1821. This image shows the town of Newcastle, the second-oldest European settlement on the Australian mainland, from the other side of the Hunter River. On the left is the famous Novocastrian landmark, Nobby’s Head.

Joseph lycett (c. 1775–1828)aborigines Resting by Camp fire, near the mouth of the hunter River, newcastle, new south Wales in The lycett album c. 1820

watercolour

piCtures ColleCtion

images of a living cultureThe Lycett Album contains 20 remarkable watercolours portraying Indigenous people hunting, fishing, cooking, dancing and in conflict with Europeans. Lycett, the convict and painter, appears to have negotiated extraordinary access to the lives and customs of the local Indigenous people. Convicted of forgery and sentenced to transportation, he arrived in Sydney in 1814. After only a year he was again convicted of forgery and this time sentenced to government labour in Newcastle, New South Wales. Most of the watercolours in the album are set in the Newcastle area and this image, like the one in Close’s sketchbook, features Nobby’s Head. Lycett returned to England in 1822. It was rumoured that, after being arrested for forgery a third time, he cut his throat and died after reopening the wounds in hospital.

Governor arthur’s Proclamation to the aborigines c.1829

oil on board

piCtures ColleCtion

Violence in Van Diemen’s land As the Van Diemen’s Land settlement expanded, violence between European settlers and Indigenous peoples intensified. Governor Arthur proclaimed martial law in November 1828 to force Indigenous peoples away from settled districts—a policy expanded in August 1830 with the notorious ‘Black Line’. Ill-conceived by government surveyor George Frankland and tied to trees and distributed to Indigenous leaders, the proclamation panels were intended to ‘make them understand the cause of the present warfare’.

WilliaM leWis RodeRick (active 1847–1856) Whaling off the islands of flores & Palo Comba in the flores sea, indian Ocean (a good cut) 30 July 1858

incised whalebone and pigment


australia’s first primary industryRoderick perfected his skills as a scrimshander between 1847 and 1856, while working as ship’s surgeon aboard the London-registered whaling ship, Adventure. With a surgeon’s eye and precision, Roderick depicted several hunting scenes by finely incising a sperm whale’s lower jaw bone and filling the lines with pigment. Exquisitely detailed and unusually large, this is a tour de force of scrimshaw art. It documents Australia’s first primary industry.

John GloveR (1767–1849)Van Diemen’s land sketchbook 1834–1835

pencil, pen and ink, wash


life in Van Diemen’s landGlover had a successful career as a landscape artist in England when surprisingly, at the age of 64, he followed his three sons to live in Van Diemen’s Land. Creatively reinvigorated by the Tasmanian light and landscape, especially the ‘remarkable peculiarity in the Trees of this Country’, Glover produced some of the most memorable early European depictions of the Australian bush. His landscapes often include farmers with their livestock or Indigenous people bathing or participating in corroborees. This opening to one of his sketchbooks contains preparatory drawings for the famous oil paintings A View of the Artist’s House and Garden, in Mills Plains, Van Diemen’s Land (1835), held by the Art Gallery of South Australia, and Mills’ Plains, Ben Lomond, Ben Loder and Ben Nevis in the Distance (1836), held by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

euGene von GuéRaRd (1811–1901) natives chasing game 1854

oil on canvas


On the road to the diggingsAustrian landscape painter von Guérard was among 90,000 people to arrive in Victoria in 1852. Returning to painting after a luckless year on the goldfields, von Guérard painted this work from a sketch made on his way to the diggings from a hill above the Yarra River. In his journal on 31 December 1852 he recorded encountering ‘Aborigines ... some clad in opossum rugs’. Von Guérard became Australia’s premier landscape artist and curator of the National Gallery of Victoria.

WilliaM stRutt (1825–1915)Portrait of John Pascoe fawkner 1856

oil on canvas

piCtures ColleCtion

a founder of melbourneStrutt described his patron Fawkner, a journalist and businessman, as ‘straightforward and honest’, someone who ‘hated all trimming and jobbery’ and whose ‘vehement denunciations made him many enemies’. Fawkner’s life story is remarkable for its many ups and downs, from shepherd boy and convict to establishment figure and parliamentarian. Paris-trained Strutt lived in Melbourne and New Zealand between 1850 and 1862, and was often in the right place at the right time, capturing many significant events.

John Michael cRossland (1800–1858)Portrait of samuel Kandwillan, a Pupil of the natives’ Training institution, Poonindie, south australia 1854

oil on canvas


an indigenous missionarySamuel Kandwillan was one of the founding members of the Poonindie Mission, established near Port Lincoln, South Australia. This portrait is one of a pair commissioned by the mission’s founder, archdeacon Matthew Hale, and is one of the earliest portraits to depict an Indigenous person in the manner and dress of the prevailing European middle-class. The other portrait is of Nannultera, a talented cricketer and is currently on loan to the National Gallery of Australia. Crossland arrived in Adelaide from England at the age of 51 and painted a number of important portraits, including of Captain Charles Sturt and George Fife Angas.

edWin RopeR loftus stocqueleR (1829–1895)australian gold diggings c.1855

oil on canvas


Golden land of the sunny southStocqueler travelled throughout the Victorian goldfields during the 1850s. Depicting panning for gold, this painting is possibly one of the few traces of Stocqueler’s Golden Land of the Sunny South, a moving panorama of 70 canvases wrapped on winding spools. Touring Victoria between 1857 and 1859, the panorama recorded Victoria before its population rose from less than 100,000 in 1851 to over 500,000 by 1860. The Bendigo Advertiser recommended the panorama to ‘the old residents of the colony’.

colony of victoRia miner’s licence for the Victorian goldfields, no. 103, 30th april 1853

ink and screened process print


Eureka!In 1851 the Victorian Government introduced licences to regulate numbers of miners on the goldfields and to help pay for government expenditure. The licences were unpopular and their imposition, combined with other grievances, caused the diggers to rebel and make a stand at the Eureka Stockade near Ballarat in December 1854. Early on 3 December, militia and police mounted an assault on about 150 heavily outnumbered miners. The action lasted about 15 minutes and some 22 miners died, with six deaths among the government ranks. Although the battle at Eureka was lost, the Victorian Government met the miners’ demands, including the abolition of the licences and the introduction of universal male suffrage.

saMuel thoMas (s.t.) Gill (1818–1880)license [i.e. licence] inspected, forrest Creek

Melbourne: Macartney & Galbraith, 1852

hand-coloured lithograph

piCtures ColleCtion

GeoRGe lacy (1816–c.1878) Capture of Bushrangers at night by Gold Police c. 1852

watercolour

piCtures ColleCtion

The artists of the gold fieldsAfter failing to earn his fortune mining the goldfields of Victoria, Gill, like his contemporary Eugene von Guerard, returned to painting. Gill’s work arguably presents the most complete visual document of life on the mid-nineteenth century goldfields and earned him the title ‘the artist of the goldfields’. This plate, showing a miner undergoing a licence inspection, is from one of his very successful series of prints.

An obscure figure in Australian art history, Lacy’s illustrations of the goldfields are often compared to Gill’s. Some of Lacy’s best works depict bushrangers, who became more active during the gold rushes.

colt’s patent fiRe aRMs ManufactuRinG coMpany (est. 1847)Colt model pocket revolver, 5 shot, .31 calibre 1849

metal and wood

frank Clune ColleCtion (piCtures)

Bushranger Ben hall’s gunThis gun, with initials ’BH’ carved into its butt, is said to have belonged to Ben Hall. From 1863, for two years, Hall’s gang was involved in numerous raids and armed robberies in New South Wales. In 1865, Hall was betrayed near Forbes (NSW), and died in a hail of police bullets. He was 27 years old. According to folklore, Hall’s wife left him in 1862 for a neighbour, Jim Taylor, whose grandson sold this gun to author Frank Clune in the 1950s.

chaRles louis GabRiel (1857–1927) Gundagai photograph collection 1887–1927

digital images reproduced from glass plate negatives

butCher anD bell ColleCtions (piCtures)

Picturing regional australiaBorn in Kempsey, NSW, Gabriel studied medicine in Sydney and at Edinburgh University, Scotland, where he won the first-prize medal for pharmacology in 1884. In 1887 he became Chief Medical Officer in Gundagai, NSW. A prominent member of the community, Gabriel’s favourite pastime was photography. His 900 surviving glass plate negatives, all held by the Library, document the vibrant life of the town.

chaRles louis GabRiel (1857–1927)matron Young practising pistol shooting on the nangus Road, Gundagai, new south Wales c.1900

glass plate negative

butCher anD bell ColleCtions (piCtures)

Dr Gabriel of GundagaiGabriel’s affection for Gundagai and his commitment to the local hospital shines through his photographs, many bearing his signature shadow. Gabriel used the portable and simple Eastman Kodak camera, available from the late 1880s. Matron Young of the Gundagai hospital was one of Gabriel’s closest friends. After Gabriel died in 1927, his archive of glass plate negatives remained in a Gundagai basement until it was rediscovered in 1955.

Burke and WillsBurke and Wills’ expedition was the most tragic and costly inland venture of the mid-19th century. Its aim was the first south–north crossing of Australia. Arranged by the Royal Society of Victoria, it left Melbourne with great fanfare in August 1860. In late 1860, Robert O’Hara Burke, William John Wills, Charles Gray and John King left their support party to go north from Cooper Creek, Queensland. At great cost, they reached the Gulf of Carpentaria. Hopes of a triumphant return were challenged when they found their support party had left Cooper Creek eight hours earlier, taking their fresh horses and camels. From April to June 1861, the three survivors attempted to return to Adelaide. Burke and Wills were probably both dead from malnutrition by late June 1861. Burke died while trying to find some Indigenous friends who had helped them earlier. Only King survived, living with an Indigenous tribe for four months.

RobeRt o’haRa buRke (1821–1861)Portion of Diary Kept by Robert O’hara Burke on the Expedition, 16 December 1860–20 January 1861

pencil on ledger paper

papers of burke anD wills expeDition (ManusCripts)

‘Grey died on the road’Burke’s notebook records the journey from the Cooper Creek depot to the Gulf of Carpentaria and back. In this undated entry, Burke notes: ’Return party from Carpentaria arrived here last night and found that the D party had started on the same day (…) Grey died on the road from hunger and fatigue’. The group spent a full day burying his body. Four days later, they arrived at Cooper Creek to find that William Brahe and the depot party had left only hours earlier.

WilliaM John Wills (1834–1861)Journal of trip from Cooper Creek towards adelaide 23 April – late June 1861

pencil on ledger paper

papers of burke anD wills expeDition (ManusCripts)

final daysWills’ journal provides a firsthand account of his last nine weeks. In late June 1861 Burke, Wills and King were severely malnourished and facing death, yet the second-last entry of Wills’ journal is surprisingly matter of fact:

Cloudy, calm & comparatively warm night clouds almost stationary, to in the morning a gentle breeze from East. sky partially cleared up during the day, making it pleasantly warm and bright it remained clear during the afternoon and evening, offering every prospect of a clear cold night.

The day before this entry was written, Burke and King left Wills at a waterhole to seek help from local Indigenous people. Burke died two days later. King returned to the waterhole alone to find Wills had also died.

a.h. Massina & co. The Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition, Departure of the Expedition (Based on the Bas-relief on Base of Charles summer’s Burke and Wills monument in swanston street, melbourne) 1860s–1870s

tinted lithograph

piCtures ColleCtion

WilliaM Monop (c. 1843–c. 1913) Drawn and Coloured by monop (male): a Ballarruk of nyeerrgoo (Victoria Plains) c. 1907

crayon and pencil

papers of Daisy bates (ManusCripts)

indigenous artist and intermediaryDaisy Bates (1863–1951) was an amateur anthropologist who believed that Australia’s Indigenous peoples were destined for extinction. In 1907 she asked Monop, an Indigenous man of the Yuet/Giragiok people, to fill this sketchbook following a public corroboree performance he had produced at Port Welshpool, Western Australia. This page depicts the slow-growing, but useful, grass tree Xanthorrhoea, commonly known as ‘blackboy’. Their flowering stalks can be harvested for spear shafts, their leaf resin used as an effective adhesive, the young shoots eaten, and the flowers soaked to create a sweet drink.

toMMy McRae (c. 1835–1901) Drawings by Tommy mcRae, an aboriginal of the Wahgunyah Tribe on the murray River 1880

ink on ledger paper

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by J.r. breMner throuGh h. GreGory Mhr, 27 noveMber 1935

Documenting a changing worldMcRae (Yackaduna) was an artist from the Wiradjuri Nation of the Lake Moodemere area, Victoria. Having worked as a stockman, McRae made a comfortable living from his art, refusing to move from his land and working easily between colonial and Indigenous societies. His unique pictorial style appealed to squatters and travellers, who bought his sketchbooks. As well as depicting corroborees, hunting and fishing, he often included European and Chinese settlers in his compositions, recording the significant changes that were beginning to impact on the traditional Indigenous way of life.

J. fitzsiMonsaboriginal king plate engraved ‘Tallboy, King of moorabie’ c.1865

engraved brass


‘Emblems of misunderstanding in an unequal meeting’Little is known of ‘Tallboy’ from Moorabie, a station in far-west New South Wales, 200 kilometres north of Broken Hill. Tallboy would have been assigned the European title of ‘king’ and given this ‘king plate’ to wear, presumably for supportive behaviour toward European settlement in the region. King plates were derived from military insignia and originated under Governor Lachlan Macquarie to assign authority to certain Indigenous persons. Today, they may be viewed as emblems of the imposition of European values.

images of exileOn 20 September 1830, 15 soldiers and 30 convicts arrived at Port Arthur, Van Diemen’s Land, to establish a timber station. Between 1833 and 1844, Port Arthur’s most famous commandant, Captain Charles O’Hara Booth (1800–1851), oversaw the expansion of the small convict settlement into one of Australia’s most notorious prison complexes.

To ‘serve time’ at Port Arthur meant that convicts had committed crimes since being transported to the colony. It is estimated that over 10,000 male convicts were imprisoned at the secondary punishment station, referred to by contemporaries as ‘earthly hell’. This reputation was cemented in the Australian psyche by Marcus Clark’s classic novel of 1870 For the Term of His Natural Life.

There is little evidence to suggest that the penitentiary was more physically brutal than other prisons. However, inmates were subject to a unique concoction of daily physical and psychological punishment, which would test the sanity of even the most hardened criminal. In this environment of extreme isolation, escape was futile.

Attributed to aldolaRius huMphRey boyd (1829–1891) Thomas molineaux, per isabella 2, Taken at Port arthur 1874

albumen print on carte-de-visite mount

piCtures ColleCtion

Attributed to aldolaRius huMphRey boyd (1829–1891) John Edington, native, Robbery 2 Years, Taken at Port arthur 1874


piCtures ColleCtion

Attributed to aldolaRius huMphRey boyd (1829–1891) henry Cavanagh at Port arthur, Tasmania 1874


piCtures ColleCtion

Attributed to aldolaRius huMphRey boyd (1829–1891) William mumford, per agusta [i.e. augusta] Jessie, Taken at Port arthur 1874


piCtures ColleCtion

australia’s most loved songIn 1895 near Winton, Queensland, Christina Macpherson and the bush poet A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1864–1941) reworked the Scottish song Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigie-Lea. Macpherson reflected: he thought he could write some lines to it. He then & there

wrote the first verse. We tried it & thought it went well, so he then wrote the other verses … in a short time everyone in the District was singing it.

The song’s meaning is still debated. Some believe it is about the 1894 shearers’ pay dispute with squatters. The Library has two Waltzing Matilda scores in Macpherson’s handwriting.

The song’s words and music passed through various incarnations in the 20th century. First published in 1903, ‘arranged’ by Marie Cowan, it later met with greater success in Thomas Wood’s 1936 version. Its popularity was cemented by famous Australian baritone Peter Dawson’s 1938 recording. Waltzing Matilda is Australia’s unofficial national anthem.

chRistina MacpheRson (1864–1936)Waltzing Matilda, with lyrics by a.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson and music by Christina macpherson c.1895

ink and pencil

ManusCripts ColleCtion presenteD by the bartlaM-roulston faMily, 2008

chRistina MacpheRson (1864–1936)Banjo Paterson’s lyrics to Waltzing Matilda c.1895

ink

ManusCripts ColleCtion presenteD by Joan MaCrae on behalf of MaCpherson DesCenDants, 1996

‘in a short time everyone in the District was singing it’ Soon after meeting Paterson, Macpherson penned this version. The music is recognisable but some words have changed. Macpherson’s swagman was not ‘jolly’ and he ‘looked at the old billy boiling’ rather than ‘watch’d and waited till his billy boiled’.

an intrepid botanical artistIn 1923, in what The Brisbane Courier later called ‘an outburst of extravagance’, the Commonwealth Government purchased 947 watercolours by Marian Ellis Rowan (1848–1922) for £5000. Rowan was an intrepid and prolific botanical artist, popular yet divisive. Artist Norman Lindsay called her work ‘vulgar’. Producing over 3000 works, she achieved fame in Australia and abroad.

Botanical art was regarded as a suitable subject for women. In 1869, in her early twenties, Rowan travelled to London probably to take painting lessons. On returning to Melbourne and encouraged by Ferdinand von Mueller, Government Botanist, she began collecting and painting flowers.

Rowan’s early works include many posy-like compositions. Later, inspired by lush vegetation, she became an exuberant colourist. Her work became wilder and bolder as she aged. Rowan travelled widely and made two trips to Papua and New Guinea, where the birdlife enchanted her. She later campaigned for bird preservation.

MaRian ellis RoWan (1848–1922) Tropical fish 1917

watercolour

ellis rowan ColleCtion (piCtures)

an unusual work for an ambitious explorer In April 1917, just short of her 69th birthday, Rowan made her second visit to Papua New Guinea, aiming to paint each of the different bird-of-paradise species. This work is the only known painting that Rowan made of fish, and was exhibited in Melbourne in 1918 along with 289 other paintings from her Papua New Guinea travels. Ever the ambitious artist, the vibrant colours of the fish and sea-snakes, coupled with the textured seaweed, suggest an attempt by Rowan to portray the ‘beautiful gardens under the sea’.

federating australiaFederating the six Australian colonies was proposed in the mid-19th century. It became a reality on 1 January 1901 through the determination of leaders such as Henry Parkes, Samuel Griffith, Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin. Drafting the nation’s founding document, the Constitution, began in 1890 and a series of conventions thrashed out the wording over the decade. The Constitution was put to popular vote in each colony between 1898 and 1900. The nation celebrated with parades, triumphal arches and illuminations.

In Melbourne on 9 May 1901, as His Royal Highness the Duke of Cornwall and York declared the first federal parliament open, the Duchess touched a button and dispatched a cable message to London ‘announcing the baptism of the New Nation’. Parliament sat in Melbourne until 1927, when it moved to Canberra, which is, as the Constitution stipulates, ‘distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney’.

toM RobeRts (1856–1931)sketch Portrait of hRh the Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V 1903

oil on wood panel

piCtures ColleCtion

federation: The ‘big picture’At the peak of his career, Roberts painted the official ‘portrait’ commemorating the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, in Melbourne, on 9 May 1901. To complete the commission, Roberts painted over 250 individual portraits, including this one of the Duke of Cornwall, who is the central figure on the dais in the finished painting. While the commission fee supported Roberts during the two years it took him to complete the work, the experience weakened his eyesight and left him exhausted. The huge painting now hangs in Parliament House, Canberra.

Official Program of Ceremonial and Entertainments Commemorative of the inauguration of the australian Commonwealth at sydney, 1 January 1901

Sydney: John Sands, 1900

lithograph

papers of sir eDMunD barton ManusCripts ColleCtion

The celebration of a nationLord Hopetoun, the first Governor-General of Australia, proclaimed the Commonwealth of Australia at a special ceremony in Centennial Park, Sydney, on 1 January 1901. This program details eight days of public celebrations commemorating the occasion, including processions by the fire brigade, a military tattoo, cycling carnivals, concerts, fireworks and cricket matches.

keith aRthuR MuRdoch (1885–1952) The Gallipoli letter 1915

typescript and ink

papers of keith arthur MurDoCh (ManusCripts) presenteD by rupert MurDoCh, 1975

‘Then in the early hours came the landing, when the life of man is at its lowest.’

This 28-page letter, written by journalist Murdoch to his friend Prime Minister Andrew Fisher (1862–1928), helped to establish the notion of Gallipoli as a disaster and as a place of national sacrifice. Murdoch’s conversational, yet brutally honest, letter led to the end of the Gallipoli campaign and to the evacuation of British and Anzac troops from the peninsula. In these pages, Murdoch describes the landing at Suvla Bay on 6 August 1915, a disastrous attempt by the British High Command to break through the Turkish and German lines on the Gallipoli peninsula. Nearly 90,000 soldiers took part in the offensive; Murdoch describes them in the letter as ‘fresh, raw, untried troops’ under the command of ‘amateur officers’.

After W.a. fRyThere’s Room for You: Jump aboard c. 1915

Sydney: William Brooks & Co. lithographers

chromolithograph

piCtures ColleCtion

We want youAs Australia followed Britain into the First World War in August 1914, the Australian Government quickly implemented a promotional strategy to encourage men to enlist. Posters like this one were distributed widely across the country and, as the war progressed, the designs became more sophisticated, employing psychological strategies to elicit emotional responses from the viewer. The artwork for this poster was copied from a contemporary British Parliamentary Recruiting Committee poster of the same title.

fRank huRley (1885–1962)Panoramic View of the Discovery approaching Corinthian Bay, heard island 1929

Panoramic View of the Discovery sailing through melted ice on Calm Waters, antarctica 1929

gelatin silver prints

british, australian anD new ZealanD antarCtiC researCh expeDition (banZare) panoraMas (piCtures) reCent aCquisition

high risk, high rewardIn addition to his work as an official photographer during the first and second world wars, Hurley is known for his extensive documentary film footage and still photographs of six Antarctic expeditions. Taken during the first BANZARE voyage (1929–1930), led by Sir Douglas Mawson (1882–1958), these works were produced using a rotating-lens panoramic camera. Hurley frequently took great personal risks to create his spectacular, high-quality photographs, such as carrying heavy cameras to the top of a ship’s mast or roping himself to a jib boom to secure the perfect shot.

australia’s wonder horseFrom 1929 to 1932, one horse dominated Australian racing, the legendary Phar Lap. From 51 starts, Phar Lap won an incredible 37 races, which included a 14-race winning streak, a record only recently beaten by Black Caviar. After winning every major Australian race (some of them twice), in March 1932 trainer Harry Telford decided to take Phar Lap to America to race in the Agua Caliente Handicap, then the richest race in the United States. In an outside barrier and coming from second last, Phar Lap gathered up the entire field to win by more than two lengths. Sadly, it would be his last win. After returning to San Francisco to rest, Phar Lap was suddenly struck by a mysterious illness and died on 5 April 1932. During the Great Depression, he had been what Australia needed most—a champion.

Tommy Woodcock leads Phar lap, Ridden by William ‘Billy’ Elliot, towards the floral Presentation after Winning the agua Caliente handicap in mexico, 20 march 1932

gelatin silver print on card

piCtures ColleCtion

Phar lap, Ridden by William ‘Billy’ Elliot, with Trainer Tommy Woodcock after Winning the agua Caliente handicap in mexico, 20 march 1932

gelatin silver print on card

piCtures ColleCtion

ThE ROYal minT albert medal (second Class) presented in the name of his majesty King George V to neighbour an aboriginal native of the Roper River for Gallantry in saving life on the 1st february 1911

bronze, enamel and ribbon

piCtures ColleCtion

an indigenous heroThis was the first imperial bravery award presented to an Aboriginal Australian. Only 27 Albert Medals were awarded to Australians. Mounted Constable Johns was escorting Aya-I-Ga (Neighbour) and two other Aboriginal prisoners in chains to face court for stealing food. While crossing a flooded river in the Northern Territory, Johns’ horse fell and kicked the policeman in the head. Aya-I-Ga dived in and rescued the constable. Aya-I-Ga was acquitted at his hearing and the judge recommended recognition of the rescue.

Those magnificent men

On 31 May 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm and two Americans, Harry Lyon and James Warner, took off in the Fokker monoplane Southern Cross. Their flight, from Oakland, California, to Australia, was the first to cross the Pacific. Kingsford Smith had flown with the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War; Ulm, while not a licensed pilot, was an experienced aviator.

Ulm kept the log during the nearly 84-hour flying time. Emotive and detailed, it gives a minute-by-minute account of how he experienced the flight. Unable to move or hear each other and separated by a large fuel tank, the crew passed notes on the end of a stick, which they nicknamed ‘Ulm’s patent enunciator’.

When they finally landed at Eagle Farm in Brisbane on 9 June, originally having plotted a course to Sydney, the crew were hailed as national heroes. They were celebrated in the media, immortalised in song and Kingsford Smith’s smiling face graced coins, notes and stamps across the Pacific. This caricature of ‘Smithy’, by cartoonist Samuel Garnet Wells, was produced for publication in the Melbourne Herald.

chaRles ulM (1897–1934)logbook of the Southern Cross on the first trans-Pacific flight 31 May–9 June 1928

pencil

papers of Charles kinGsforD sMith (1897–1935) ManusCripts ColleCtion

siR chaRles kinGsfoRd sMith (1897–1935) chaRles ulM (1897–1934)notes passed between the cockpit and the navigating cabin during the Southern Cross trans-Pacific flight 31 May–9 June 1928

pencil

papers of e.a. anD v.i. CroMe ManusCripts ColleCtion

saMuel GaRnet Wells (1885–1964)‘it’s now a Very small World We live in’ [Charles Kingsford smith] 1928

ink and gouache

piCtures ColleCtion

haRold cazneauX (1878–1953)arch in the sky c.1930

gelatin silver prints

piCtures ColleCtion

Capturing modern australiaRenowned for producing many memorable images of Australian life and culture in the early 20th century, Cazneaux was one of the most influential photographers of his time. Often praised for his extraordinary diversity, he encouraged other photographers to move away from the typically low-toned European style of pictorial photography to capture a distinctly Australian light and landscape. In documenting the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Cazneaux produced works that incorporated modernist ideals to introduce a more industrial, urban Australia.

ethel caRRick (1872–1952)Canberra c. 1944.

oil on canvas

piCtures ColleCtion

The missing paintings of CanberraA prolific post-impressionist artist, Carrick is known for her bustling city and beach scenes filled with intense colour and vibrant brushstrokes. Travelling extensively throughout Australia and Europe, she maintained her practice while promoting the work of her famous husband, Melbourne artist Emanuel Phillips Fox. This north-east view of Old Parliament House is believed to have been part of an exhibition in the Masonic Temple, Barton, which Carrick organised to raise funds for the war effort in September, 1944. The whereabouts of most of the 62 exhibits, predominantly landscapes around Canberra, is unknown.

doRothy Wall (1894–1942)Blinky Bill: The Quaint little australian

Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd, 1933

australian rare books ColleCtion

’The bush was alive with excitement’This is the first copy of the first edition of Wall’s timeless Australian children’s story. Blinky Bill made his debut appearance in Brooke Nicholls’ Jacko: The Broadcasting Kookaburra. However it was in his own series, written and illustrated by Wall, that the adventures of Blinky and his friends, Nutsy, Splodge, Flap and Marcia, have been told to the delight of generations. Wall’s son Peter provided inspiration for the cheeky little koala and he kept this copy, a gift from his mother, which is dedicated to him and all kind children. Since 1933 Blinky Bill has never been out of print in Australia.

JaMes noRthfield (1887–1973)Canberra, federal Capital & Garden City, australia

Melbourne: Australian National Travel Association (ANTA), c. 1930

offset lithograph

piCtures ColleCtion

selling a national identityThis poster, created by the acclaimed commercial artist Northfield, was commissioned by ANTA in the early 1930s in an effort to promote the newly built capital of Canberra as a tourist destination to domestic and overseas travellers. It depicts a couple on the verandah of what is probably the post office at Queen Victoria Terrace, surveying the fledgling capital city through binoculars, with Black Mountain in the distance. Northfield is regarded as one of the leading Australian commercial artists of the twentieth century and his striking designs were much sought after by a range of commercial and government clients.

lost diaries foundDonald Friend was a superb draughtsman, painter and writer, and a bon vivant with a biting wit. The Library holds 46 of Friend’s candid diaries from 1930 to 1988, giving an intimate and extensive portrait of the man. Recently, two further wartime diaries were discovered in the United States, where they had been since the artist sold them to an American soldier and friend in 1944. The soldier was Edgar Kaufmann Jnr (1910–1989), later a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Kaufmann lived at ‘Falling Water’, the landmark house by Frank Lloyd Wright. He kept the diaries there and bequeathed them to a friend. Friend wrote: So if Mr Kaufmann is willing to buy them ... I’d rather he had

them—the Mitchell Library and Sir Keith Murdoch can’t hope to compete with one who lives in a house over a waterfall.

donald fRiend (1915–1989)Diaries of Donald friend: Disasters of War (Desastres de la Guerra), Volume 9 1943

mixed media

ManusCripts ColleCtion DonateD by eMeritus professor DaviD De lonG, 2010

a wartime self-portraitIn August 1943, Friend was stationed at Greta Army Camp, near Maitland, New South Wales. In this diary he attempts to alleviate the boredom and drudgery of camp life by recording astute observations of others, and of himself. His self-obsession is reflected in the accompanying text:

There is such intimate familiarity with the work of one’s own hand that the eye is blinded to it by close association. I cannot judge it coldly but only by the delight I took in creating it … So I am usually uncritically infatuated with my paintings as I am with myself.

This drawing is one of many self-portraits that Friend made during his wartime service.

donald fRiend (1915–1989)Diaries of Donald friend: Disasters of war (Desastres de la Guerra), volume 14 1944

mixed media

ManusCripts ColleCtion DonateD by eMeritus professor DaviD De lonG, 2010

friend on leaveThis diary begins in early 1944 when Friend was on long leave from the army, spending the final weeks in Sydney. He writes: ‘how shall I ever be able to go back to the army?’ It had been a profitable time for his art, in which he completed several landscapes: ‘In between lunching, parties & boozing, I’ve been painting’. These drawings, probably completed during this time, give a sense of both his frenetic activity and regular haunts.

second World War, 1939–1945Australia followed Britain into war against Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939. For six years, the Second World War raged on multiple fronts, from Europe and North Africa to the Pacific. About a million Australians served in these theatres of war; nearly 40,000 of them died. The conflict saw the use of new technologies like the atomic bomb. Never before had innocent civilians been drawn into such a bloody conflict on this scale.

Concentration camps in South-East Asia and in eastern Europe became vehicles for racial elimination policies. Around the world, governments captured service personnel and interned civilians from enemy countries, placing them in camps to separate them from the general population. Japan interned about 130,000 Allied civilians and thousands of Allied service personnel during the war.

The Library holds significant material relating to the Second World War on subjects including wartime internment and prisoners of war.

J.n.d. haRRison (1911–1980)Diary Kept at Changi Prison, singapore (with loose Drawings) 1942–1945

pencil and ink

papers of John noel DouGlas harrison ManusCripts ColleCtion

‘Bricked up at Changi’English police officer J.N.D. Harrison kept this diary while a civilian internee at Singapore’s notorious Changi Prison during the Second World War. He wrote the diary as a love letter to his wife, telling her in painful detail of his despair, hunger and hope. Drawings found between its pages evoke daily life in the prison. As keeping a diary became increasingly dangerous, he decided to hide it. Transferred to another camp in 1944, he claimed it after his release in 1945. Harrison later settled in Australia.

Jeff caRteR (1928–2010)Tobacco Road 1955 or 1956

gelatin silver print

piCtures ColleCtion

Capturing australiaPhotography, writing and travelling were Carter’s three passions when he hitchhiked out of Melbourne in 1946 with a camera and a typewriter. By 1949, his stories and images appeared regularly in print. Capturing rural and outback Australia during the 1950s and 1960s, Carter documented the lives of ordinary Australians, including tobacco farmers in Ovens Valley, Victoria. In one of his most recognised images, two women and a child push-start a newly acquired car unaware it is out of petrol, while Dad steers and Jill the cow looks on.

Protest People

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association’. This is Article 20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In its comparatively short postcolonial history, Australian society has exercised the right to assert a range of domestic, civil and international freedoms. This selection of photographs captures some of the protest movements that Australians have rallied around since the 1930s, and represents only a small proportion of the myriad social groups and minorities that have found a voice through protest.

This display will change over time, highlighting aspects of the Library’s vast collection of photographs. The Library collects works by great and unknown photographers documenting every facet of Australian history, life and culture.

John olsen (b. 1928)manuscript of Salute to Five Bells: John Olsen’s Opera House Journal 1971–1973

watercolour and ink


a new spirit in australiaOlsen kept a visual diary while working on his celebrated mural for the Sydney Opera House. Based on Kenneth Slessor’s poem Five Bells, Olsen declares his vision of the Opera House’s cultural presence: ‘poets should also have a place in the great building’. Hints of Olsen’s creative process are glimpsed in these pages. On this page, he praises Jørn Utzon’s design, writing: ‘the Sydney Opera House—whose forms speak a new spirit in Australia—it’s superbly related to site—after going over the building I am rather taken with the homogeneity of its forms.’

JøRn utzon (1918–2008)architect’s model for the geometry of the sydney Opera house shells 1961

paint, wood and letraset type

piCtures ColleCtion presenteD by professor h. inGhaM ashworth

Key to an australian iconDanish architect Utzon spent three years searching for a solution to the basic geometry behind the construction of the Sydney Opera House. His ‘key to the shells’, inspired by peeling an orange, allowed him to ‘attain full harmony between all the shapes’. Pushing engineering to the limit and taking the project over time and budget, Utzon’s design required a reluctant government to keep faith in his vision. The architect resigned and left Australia in 1966 never to return.

sydney Opera house: architecture, painting, music and poetry

Construction of the Sydney Opera House began in 1959 and took 14 difficult years. The New South Wales Government baulked at the $102 million cost of the building that is now an Australian icon and contributes about $1 billion to Australia’s economy. The Opera House was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in June 2007. In 1971, the Dobell Art Foundation commissioned Australian artist John Olsen to paint a 21-metre-long mural for the Opera House concert hall foyer. Salute to Five bells, Olsen’s most famous public work, was installed in 1973 as the building neared completion. The Opera House was opened by the Queen later that year. Olsen took his inspiration from Kenneth Slessor’s poem Five bells, a classic of Australian poetry. A meditation on time, the poem remembers Slessor’s friend Joe Lynch, who fell from a Sydney Harbour ferry and drowned in 1927.

patRick White (1912–1990)manuscript for The Hanging Garden 1980s

ink

papers of patriCk white ManusCripts ColleCtion reCent aCquisition

a masterpiece in the makingWhite kept the existence of The Hanging Garden a secret to the end. In 1981 he began the novel about the dislocated lives of two orphans who are fostered out during the Second World War. White’s biographer David Marr, adept at deciphering the author’s handwriting, reflects: ‘The Hanging Garden was a masterpiece in the making and its abandonment after 50,000 words was a watershed in White’s life and a loss, a damn shame, for Australian writing’. The Hanging Garden was published to popular acclaim in April 2012.

literary treasures rediscoveredIn 1973, Patrick White (1912–1990) became the first and only Australian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. White published novels, plays, poems, short stories and a best-selling autobiography, Flaws in the glass (1981).

In 1977, White asserted that he had destroyed all his manuscripts and that ‘anything unfinished when I die will be burnt’. Among 32 boxes of papers unexpectedly acquired by the Library in 2006 are ten notebooks and three unpublished manuscripts, including a draft novel ‘The hanging garden’. Also within the collection are White’s beret and glasses, recipes, collections of art and music, and ephemera relating to his activism.

White was a prodigious collector of modern Australian art and, in his later years, he was a fervent activist for Indigenous rights, an Australian republic and nuclear disarmament.

bRendan hennessy Patrick White 1984

digital reproduction of gelatin silver print

piCtures ColleCtion Courtesy of brenDan hennessy

MaRtin Wells (SYDNEY) Glasses c. 1985

plastic, metal and glass

papers of patriCk white (1930–2002) ManusCripts ColleCtion reCent aCquisition

Patrick White’s glassesThese Martin Wells glasses belonged to Australian author Patrick White, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. They came to the Library with a collection of papers that were previously considered to have been destroyed. David Malouf, speculating as to White’s reaction to his glasses being on display, wrote: ‘I can hear the hoot he would have given at the translation of these ordinary objects of his poor existence into the realm of the iconic … He would have been amused by that’.

peteR poRteR oaM (1929–2010)notebook containing draft of The Melbourne General Cemetery between 1984 & 1988

ink

papers of peter porter (ManusCripts)

‘This is a territory strange to me’Porter is considered to be one of the greatest Australian poets of the late twentieth century. Born in Brisbane, he left Australia in 1951 for London, working as a journalist and critic to support his poetry. Although he did not return to live in Australia, he visited many times from 1974 onward, and much of his work from this period deals with his separation from Australia and his ambivalence towards his adopted British homeland. Porter said of this struggle for a sense of place—‘I think the poet’s true country is his own mind, and that will receive stimuli from anywhere and everywhere.’ The Melbourne General Cemetery was published in 1999 in Volume 2 of his Collected Poems (1984–1999).

The most remarkable retirement gift in australian art historyAt a farewell picnic in 1971, over 200 colleagues and friends presented Hal Missingham AO (1906–1994) with Fully bound, a textile-bound album to which each contributed a page. Missingham had been the Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales since 1945. Among the affectionate contributors were Australia’s most important artists and photographers, including Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, Brett Whiteley, Fred Williams and Russell Drysdale.

Over 26 years, Missingham transformed the collections and ethos of the gallery, supporting and promoting contemporary Australian artists. His 1973 memoir, They kill you in the end, records Missingham’s fight against bureaucracy and conservatism. The album is an extraordinary collaborative work and a fitting tribute to Missingham, also a talented artist, who influenced the life and work of many. Fully bound was already held by the Library when a tragic electrical fire destroyed Missingham’s Sydney studio in 1986.

RobeRt klippel (1920–2001)untitled in fully Bound: Over to hal missingham: a Tribute with love and affection 1971

mixed media

papers of hal MissinGhaM (ManusCripts)

art doesn’t have to say somethingOften described as Australia’s greatest sculptor, Klippel was born in Sydney and studied at East Sydney Technical College. After serving in the Navy during the Second World War, making models of ships and aircraft, Klippel travelled to London. There he met Australian surrealist painter James Gleeson (1915–2008) and his early works were heavily influenced by Surrealism. By the 1950s, however, Klippel had moved away from the surrealist aesthetic and began joining found objects together to create his famous ‘junk assemblages’. Returning to Australia in 1963, he established a studio in Sydney and, over the course of his career, is estimated to have created more than 1,300 sculptures and 5,000 drawings and collages.

RichaRd flanaGan (b. 1961)first page from a draft of Death of a River Guide c. 1993

typescript and pen

papers of riCharD flanaGan (ManusCripts) reCent aCquisition

Who is this drowning?Published in 1994, Death of a River Guide was acclaimed Tasmanian novelist Flanagan’s first foray into fiction. In the first chapter we learn that Aljaz Cosini, the river guide, is slowly drowning beneath a waterfall in the Franklin River. Over the course of the novel he is beset by visions of his life and that of his family and forebears. Powerful and arresting, the book was nominated for the Miles Franklin Award and went on to be published internationally and win numerous honours, as have Flanagan’s subsequent novels, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist and Wanting.

elyne Mitchell oaM (1913–2002)first page from a draft of The Silver Brumby c. 1957

typescript and ink

papers of elyne MitChell (ManusCripts)

‘a silver brumby is a rare and special creature …’Set in the Snowy Mountains, Mitchell’s The Silver Brumby is a classic work of Australian children’s literature. The story of Thowra, the silver brumby stallion, was written by Mitchell for her eldest daughter and born out of her frustration at the lack of interesting literature for older children. Although she is best known for the Silver Brumby series, Mitchell also wrote novels and non-fiction relating to the Snowy Mountains as well as family and military history. To commemorate the centenary of her birth, the first two novels in the series—The Silver Brumby and Silver Brumby’s Daughter—were republished in 2013.

les MuRRay ao (b. 1938)Draft manuscript for Shoal c. 1992

ink

papers of les Murray (ManusCripts)

Translations from the natural worldMurray is one of Australia’s most significant contemporary poets and has been named as an Australian Living Treasure. Born in rural New South Wales, Murray considers himself a ‘bushie’ and much of his poetry explores identity and the influence of the land in shaping it. This is a draft of Shoal, which was published in Translations from the Natural World in 1992. In this collection, poems are presented as being the voice of nature and, from plants, animals and natural phenomena to the DNA of a single cell, the poems explore the idea that nature’s experience is our experience, and that we are all entitled to own it. Murray is the recipient of many awards and honours, including the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize in 1996.

GoRdon bennett (b. 1955)notes to Basquiat: untitled 1999

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

piCtures ColleCtion new aCquisition

‘sorry?’In 1998 Bennett travelled to New York, a trip that would provide the impetus for a significant body of work in which he pays homage to the late painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. In these paintings, Bennett draws parallels between his experiences as a contemporary Indigenous artist and those of Basquiat, one of the first African-American artists to receive critical acclaim. Here, Bennett references Basquiat’s unique style through the use of text and symbol, while making a simple but powerful statement about the Howard Government’s refusal in 1999 to apologise to the Stolen Generations.

la stupenda

Dame Joan Sutherland OM, AC, DBE (1926–2010) is widely regarded as one of the greatest bel canto sopranos. Born in Sydney to Scottish parents, she spent her childhood mimicking her mother, a trained, but never professional, mezzo-soprano. Sutherland was 18 before she began training seriously, and in 1947 she made her debut as Dido in Dido and Aeneas. In 1949 she won the Sun Aria competition followed by the prestigious Mobil Quest in 1950. Shortly afterward she left Australia for England to study at the Royal College of Music where she was reacquainted with Sydney pianist and conductor Richard Bonynge (b. 1930). They married in 1954 while Sutherland was performing with the Covent Garden Opera. On 17 February 1959 Sutherland sang the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, a performance that is still regarded as one of the defining moments in twentieth century opera.

In 1965 Sutherland and Bonynge returned to Australia. Joining forces with theatre company J.C. Williamson Ltd to form The Sutherland-Williamson Grand Opera Company. Sutherland reprised her five greatest roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, Semiramide, Marguerite in Faust, Amina in La Sonnambula and Violetta in La Traviata, opposite the young Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007).

tonina doRati (b. 1945)Faust Costume for Joan sutherland as Marguerite, sutherland-Williamson Opera season 1965

gouache, ink, pencil and wash on card

piCtures ColleCtion

Dressing a Prima DonnaDorati was born in Australia while her father, the famed composer Antal Dorati (1906–1988), was touring with the Ballet Russes. At the age of 24, she was given the job of designing both costumes and scenery for the entire 1965 Sutherland–Williamson Grand Opera Company’s season. In a newspaper article from January of that year, Dorati says of working with the soprano–‘Miss Sutherland doesn’t like to mix colours in one costume’.

Joan sutherland and luciano Pavarotti, last night [La Traviata, her majesty’s Theatre, sydney 6 October 1965]

gelatin silver print

laDy viola tait ColleCtion (piCtures)

GiusEPPE VERDi (1813-1901)la Traviata: opera in three acts 1900

london: novello Company & limited

lithograph, typescript, ink and pencil

J.C. williaMson ColleCtion (MusiC)

The Voice of the CenturyJust four years after beginning his professional career, Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti was invited by Joan Sutherland to sing the role of Alfredo in La Traviata, on The Sutherland-Williamson Grand Opera Company’s 1965 tour. They were great admirers of each other’s talent; Pavarotti famously dubbing the soprano - ‘The Voice of the Century’. This copy of the score, used to prompt the performers in rehearsal, is annotated throughout with staging and lighting cues by Moffat Oxenbould, the Company’s stage manager.

edWaRd koiki Mabo (1936–1992)speaking notes for ‘land rights for Torres strait islanders’ August 1981

ballpoint pen

papers of eDwarD koiki Mabo ManusCripts ColleCtion aCquireD froM Mrs bonita Mabo in 1994

The beginning of the mabo caseMabo delivered this speech at the Land Rights and Future of Australian Race Relations Conference, James Cook University, Townsville. Mabo explained the traditional land ownership system of Mer (Murray Island) and subsequent speakers reaffirmed his argument. Later at the conference, the Meriam delegates, lawyers and advisors met and decided to launch a land rights test case. By May 1982, a Statement of Claim was filed in the High Court of Australia with Mabo as leading plaintiff.


Memory ofthe World



edWaRd koiki Mabo (1936–1992)self portrait c.1975

wash on white ground on masonite

piCtures ColleCtion

The mabo case and land rights

‘the lands of this continent were not terra nullius or “practically unoccupied” in 1788’

hiGh Court JustiCes williaM Deane anD Mary GauDron in the Mabo JuDGMent

The hard-fought, decade-long legal battle remembered simply as ‘Mabo’ ended in 1992 with this landmark ruling that recognised Indigenous land rights, transforming the Australian cultural and political landscape. In 2001, the Mabo Case Manuscripts were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register along with James Cook’s Endeavour journal. The papers of Edward Koiki Mabo (1936–1992), leading plaintiff in the case, and his lawyer were inscribed as ‘a rare instance in world history of pre-existing tribal law being formally recognised’. Lawyer and friend Bryan Keon-Cohen, speaking at Mabo’s funeral in Townsville, Queensland, in February 1992, remembered him as ‘a fighter for equal rights, a rebel, a free-thinker, a restless spirit, a reformer who saw far into the future and far into the past’.


Memory ofthe World



edWaRd koiki Mabo (1936–1992)E. mabo’s Portion of ai 1980s

ink, felt-tip pen and highlighter pen

papers of bryan keon-Cohen: the Mabo Case (ManusCripts)

Proving traditional ownershipIn 1981 Mabo, a Meriam community leader, claimed traditional land rights on behalf of the Indigenous peoples of Mer [Murray Island] and other islands in the Torres Strait. In the case, hand-drawn maps of Mer showing family property boundaries were important in demonstrating enduring traditional ownership. This map identifies the location of ‘E. Mabo’s portion of Ai’ using both natural and man-made landmarks to define the boundaries of his claim.

Documents

TREASURES GALLERY · Torch of the xVi Olympiad Melbourne 1956 diecast aluminium alloy and silver piCtures ColleCtion reCent aCquisition 1956 Olympic torch This is one of 110 torches